Two Bows, Two Lives, One Story
by sky-diving purple kangaroo
Summary: Who's Speedy really? Is he just an annoying archer with more similarities to one of Apollo's sacred cows than an actual person? Or something more? How about we ask his first friend since she's coming in to visit, not that she knows!strob bbra cyB spOC jeK
1. She Who Made A Grown Man Cry

The alley off of Allen Avenue was innocent looking enough as far as alleys go. But looks could be decieving, somthing that the residents of southern Jump City were well aware of. While the overall crime rates of the city had gone down since the Teen Titans had taken up residence there, every community had its more...unsavory areas. And as a stark contrast to the clean, law abiding north side, the south was mostly made up of drug dealers, thieves, thugs, gangs, murderers, rapists, and more. Of course, the "north" was probably at least twenty times larger than the "south" and much more densly populated with all of its high rise apartment buildings and whatnot.

There were, of course, border citizens that had to venture into the most dangerous place on the city to their jobs on the docks that were housed there. They were mostly burly from their laborous work, and walked home in groups or drove in carpools to protect themselves.

But even they weren't always completely safe.

They had learned to ignore the screams and pleading of scared voices coming from the omnipresent alleyways and to just speed up, hoping that they would not become the next victim. This happened daily and nothing was done to change it. But none of it was happening right then, at three in the morning, when all of the dockhands had already gone home. The alleys were silent except for the cries of stray cats as they fought it out over spare scaps of food and the Allen Avenue Alley was no different, if one were to look from the outside.

But if a person was brave enough to venture into "Dead Man's End", as the new resident of said alley had nick-named it, they would find a figure in a raven's wing colored cloak standing over a man's bleeding body.

"Try something like that again, and you won't live to regret it. You _will_ do as I say," the figure hissed and removed its foot off the bloodied man's chest. The heavily muscled thug trembled and covered his bruised and battered face. The figure continued,"Now get out of my sight, you make me sick." He nodded quickly in terrified submission, stumbled up, and ran as fast as his legs could carry him out of the mass of shadows that could have been the last thing he ever saw.

Or so he thought, anyway. The cloaked person (if that was what it was) had never killed anybody and didn't plan to, but its words had the desired effect all the same. It turned and walked deeper into the alley until it came to a hidden hatch on the ground and opened it to lead into an underground wearhouse that had been altered into a secret layer of sorts. The person jumped in, closing the hatch behind them and took off their hood.

The face of a girl in her early teens was revealed as she went about turning the lights on. The girl had white-blond hair that fell in curls to her waist and golden colored eyes with flecks of brown in them. Once the entire room was bathed in light she sat down on a hammock in the corner and looked at the place she'd be living in until she felt the need to move on again. The room was large, probably 10,000 square feet**(apx. 33m by 33m) **on each of the three floors. The floor she was on now was the basement and held her hammock, makeshift closet for her clothes, refrigerator/freezer/pantry, and a 10by10ft **(3.3by3.3m) **was cut through the ceiling with a rope ladder leading to the next floor. The rest of the building was two strories with a catwalk going around where the floor would be between the first and second stories. The "first floor" contained a bathroom that was presumably for employees when the wearhouse was in operation and outfitted with a toilet, sink, and port-a-shower **(they really do make them, google it if you don't believe me)** "bought" by the new owner, an expansive rack that took up nearly a whole wall filled to the brim with swords, spears, knifes, arrows in quivers, spare bows, shields, and even more exotic ones such as shuriken, maces, large mallets, chains, hand cuffs, clubs **(the big wooden sticks, not the sandwich)**, grenades, flash bombs, and things that she didn't even know the names of. That floor was also home to a large computer system with a moniter that could rival Slade's and a big rainbow making prism. Finally, along the catwalks stood a vast assortment of art supplies and instruments, along with a few books about poetry.

She sighed in contentment as she realised that she had finally found a place big and secure enough to unload all of her stuff from the magically invisible space expanding locker for the first time since she packed it all up from her cabin, part of the armory, and part of cabin 8- plus some of the things that she had added to it over the past few years. The girl stood up and removed her cloak to reveal a pair of pajamas and a bow. She took the bow off her shoulder and held it in both hands in front of her; it glowed for a second before disapearing. She flopped into her hammock, having no need to prepare for bed because she had already done it when she found that thug lurking in _her_ alleyway.

The girl, known as Pheobe, smiled to herself before burying herself in her blankets and falling asleep.


	2. The Great And Masterful Angsting One

On the other side of Jump City, as the blond haired archer fell into an easy sleep, a red headed archer was still trying to force himself into a very needed sleep inside of a crowded "T" shaped building. This was none other than Speedy, the "normal" member of Titans East, at least, that's what he led them to believe.

As hard as he tried, he knew that getting sleep wasn't going to happen when it was the day before full moon and he had neglected to go out the previous month. Despite Bumblebee's constant whining about how annoying he was, she had become quite the nuisance herself, with her unceasing desire to know exactly where her team was during every second of the day, keeping the young bowman away from what was supposed to be manditory. It was getting to the point where he was in a constant bad mood and the growing distance of his soul from the moon's essence was making him act like his mother's preconcieved "arrogant boy" steroetype. He was jumpy, too. His blood wouldn't stop racing in anticipation for the hunt, the dire need to go running out through the moonlight woundn't stop buzzing at the back of his head, and more than anything, his desire to use his own bow, not the golden yellow colored one that he had been given by Green Arrow when he started fighting crime.

It was either that keeping him awake, or his heavily snoring roommate who somehow found a way to remove anything the agile archer stuck up his nose. Either way, it kept him from the sleep he so desperately wanted. Not that he really needed it anyway, since he had successfully been able to sleep until four o'clock in the afternoon, but it would have been nice to have had a full night's sleep when he would have to be up with the full moon the next night anyways. After ten more minutes of staring at the ceiling looking for nonexistant faults in the metal (it was a wonder they never got baked from spending so much time in metal rooms), Speedy gave up hope for sleep and left to wander the spacious tower. While he walked he wondered what was going to happen now, not just to him, but to the Titans in general. Taking down the Brotherhood of Evil and their allies had left many of the young superheroes without much work to do. Of course, some of them still had smalltime oponents that weren't with the Brotherhood and had all left less than a week after they returned to the tower. This included Pantha (who had a very important match that she couldn't miss), the Herald, Thunder and Lightning (they still stopped in most days, but prefered their open skies to the over-populated Titans Tower), and Gnaark, who was scared of modern society but insisted that Kole stay to spend time with their new friends (or atleast, that is what we assume he said). Nobody else left because, frankly, the life of a superhero was often a lonely one and when nobody was dependent on them, they had nothing to do and that was when things got dangerous. Most of them wouldn't go back to their homes and would be seperated into teams to be placed all over the world. _'So of course, Bumblebutt had to choose now to start bugging Robin about getting another girl into the East Team,' _Speedy thought mutinously.

He pushed open yet another door and was hit by a burst of salty air. Having managed to wander onto the roof of Titan's Tower, Speedy felt the need to burst out laughing at the luck of ending up brooding in the tower's unofficial teenage angsting spot.

Oh, the irony!


End file.
